On break

I'm finally on holidays after finishing all my exams last week. It feels weird having a week of holidays while most other uni students are still in their first month back, but I'm relieved to have a break after all the exam study. I'm pretty sure I did well, though I won't find out for sure until the end of semester results are released in July.

Though in some ways I would prefer if I didn't have holidays. History shows that I never do anything much (useful or not) when I have time off, and I usually end up thinking too hard about depressing things that I don't otherwise have the time to. This time I've been considering my rather paradoxical problems with interacting with other people. 

I have absolutely no problems with talking to people I've never met before in a professional context, even about very sensitive and private matters (which is good, since that's essential for my planned career), but when it's in a social context I become completely retarded. It's not that I'm anxious or anything, it's more a problem of knowing what to say. Not in an autistic way, but it just seems like such a bother to wade through the small-talk only to find out that you don't have a lot in common with them anyway. It doesn't help that I'm a very private person and would never reveal my "powerlevel" as such, and carefully selecting what I do and don't tell people just makes me come across as boring. Because of this, I pretty much never initiate any relationship. I have a few friends, though I have no idea how it happened.

I still wish I had people I could talk to without having to hold back certain hobbies/interests out of fear of being ridiculed for them.

I can fully see myself becoming one of those people who work incredibly long hours and drink too much alcohol, both of which are very effective ways of taking your mind off personal problems (even if they're useless for dealing with the cause of the problem).

Onto less self-indulgent things. I just finished watching the two Vocaloid concerts that were on last weekend: Mikupa and the last 39 concert. Echoing the thoughts of everyone else who's written about it: it was thankfully far better visually than the 2010 Tokyo concert. No giant TVs on stage this time. Thank fuck.

Mikupa was on the first night, and though the setlist was fairly conservative the visuals were stunning. The projection's advanced to the point where they can now use more varied lighting (e.g. you can see a silhouetted Miku when the stage lights are off, and she can run outside a spotlight and become 'darker' as you'd expect). The physics in general were looking really good, and she moved around the stage a lot more than I remember in previous years. The songs had also been retuned a bit, which was very welcome since some of them really needed it.

Some of the costumes were pretty eye-catching

The 39's Giving Day final was impressive in its own way, with a full backing band including a full strings section, trumpets and a sax. The instruments worked in really well with the songs and made it more of a concert experience. Meiko made her first appearance (and Kaito showed up for a song at Mikupa) but while her model was pretty nice it really showed how poorly her voice compares to the Vocaloid2 crew.

The setlist here was pretty conservative too, though there were a few new ones. I can understand it seeing as it's the last concert and most people want to hear the favourites. I'm not sure what the future plans for concerts are; they're popular enough that I'm sure they'll still continue in some way. I hope so anyway.

As a side note: they really make the audience work for the encore.